Here's a collection of vero (stripboard) and tagboard guitar and bass effect layouts that we have put together covering many classic and popular effects in growing numbers. Many of these have been posted on freestompboxes.org, so check that site out for great discussions on building your own effect pedals. Enjoy the builds and please also visit us on Facebook and Twitter

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Saturday, 5 April 2014

Barber Gain Changer

Another versatile overdrive here from Dave Barber, and as usual at a very fair price. If you want to fine tune the mids and bass content to suit your own style or gear, consider socketing the 7K5 resistor on the right for mids, and the 22K resistor at the top for bass.

Info about the original:

Measuring only 2.3” wide, the NEW Barber Gain-Changer harnesses a vast spectrum of EQ and gain. Flick the toggle one way and you have sweet very low-gain overdrive, flick it the other way and you get wildly charged harmonic content of our much praised unLimiTeD distortion. Pop over to the other toggle-switch and you can volley between the flat sweet-EQ of the LTD SR , the vintage snarling-fat-EQ of our classic LTD v2 or a new voice that combines flat EQ with a little added fatness. Combine all these different options together and you have a super-versatile harmonic beast. Our goal was to shrink the size of our pedals and retain all the ultra-high quality electronics and build quality that we are world famous for. In the end, it’s almost impossible to miss the target if you are shopping for a new overdrive for your rig, “it’s like shooting fish in a barrel Jethro.”The Gain-Changer has real honest solder lugs for jacks, True-bypass footswitch, toggles and pots. There are no worries about PCB mounted thru-panel parts that can’t be serviced on the road, or that lead to high cost repairs. Nothing but the best tried and true hand-built methods adorn the interior of the Barber Electronics Gain-Changer. The Gain-Changer has a generous 2 1/2” of clearance between the front edge of the footswitch and the back edge of the knobs, no more worries about changing your settings with each click of your footswitch. Buy a hand-built Barber Gain-Changer, and enter a world of immense overdrive possibilities.

Hi Ivlark. This is the second layout I did (noisy cricket mk II was my first) built, and it is working great, Thank you very much for your great work, it's fantastic ! (even if i did swap gain lug 1 and 3 after testing ;) ). Good job !

Reboxed it last month, really love Barber effects look and feel. Take this as a tribute : https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=538729569592587&l=c541d12d07I managed to put a battery in the box, really great layout and great sounding effect.

They're two series anti-parallel diodes in the feedback loop of the opamp, so simply for clipping and distorting the signal. You'll see those a lot in these layouts in both opamp and transistor circuits. 4 diodes like this clips less than just having a single pair of anti parallel diodes. Both of the above give you symmetrical clipping and so both halves of the waveform are clipped the same, but sometimes you'll see just one diode in one direction and two in the other which give you asymmetrical clipping where one side of the wave form clips more than the other. All variations with subtle differences.

I'm hoping to build a super tweakable BB version of this circuit and have some questions. First off I'd like to replace the mid & bass resistors with pots. Thinking 10k for the mid and 50k for the bass, any opinions on taper? Also, could the gain switch portion of the circuit have a resistor replaced with a pot that would adjust the crunch level?

In the hopes of a foot switchable lead setting, I've added 2 volume pots, 2 gain pots, and 2 eq switches toggled via 3pdt. The volume/gain work fine but the eq makes a pop, if either the 8k2 or 16k are selected. I own a gain changer and it also pops if you toggle the eq switch. Is there anything I can do to eliminate the pop when those parallel resistors are toggled? Thanks!

(sorry for my bad english)i'm having some trouble with the gain switch. When lugs 1 and 2 are connected, there is no sound at all. When lugs 2 and 3 are connected, the pedal works perfectly. Now i just strip off the switch and the pedal works.

A number of people have asked me to do a build guide for one of these effects, but I noticed the other day that one of the guys here (timmy)...

Note

Not all these layouts are verified and some are put together from unverified schematics. So if you have good luck, or bad luck for that matter, then please let me know by dropping a comment in the topic. Thanks.

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